Earth Abides

Like the blood of some leviathan oozing from a hundred thousand pinpricks, the life-giving water flowed away through open faucets and leaking joints and broken pipes.

And now, where the still-standing gauge showed that the depth had recently been twenty feet, only a thin skin of water covered the bottom of the reservoir.

When Ish woke up that morning, he realized that it was a fine sunny day, and that he had slept well and was rested. Em was gone from the bed, and he heard the familiar little sounds from downstairs which meant that breakfast would soon be ready. He lay still for a few minutes, thoroughly enjoying himself, coming back more slowly than usual to full consciousness. He felt it a very fortunate circumstance to be able to lie in bed a little while longer if you wished, not merely on Sunday morning, but on any morning. There was no sharp looking at clocks, in the life that they lived now, and no need for him or for anyone else, to catch the 7:53 train. He was living a life of greater freedom than anyone could possibly have lived in the Old Times. Perhaps, with his special temperament he was even living more happily now than he could have lived then.

When he felt ready, he got up and shaved. There was no hot water, but he did not care about that particularly. As a matter of fact, nobody would have minded if he had not shaved at all, but he liked the sense of cleanliness and stimulation that the shave gave him.

He dressed—a new sport shirt and a pair of blue jeans. He stuck his feet into some comfortable slippers, went slopping down stairs, and steered toward the kitchen.

As he came to the door, he heard Em say, rather more sharply than she was used to speak, “Josey child, why don’t you turn that faucet farther, so you can really get some water?”

“But, Mommie, it is turned on, as hard as I can turn it.”

Ish, coming into the kitchen, saw that Josey was holding the tea-kettle in the sink under the faucet, and that only a trickle of water was running.

“Morning!” he said. “I guess I’ll have to get George to come over and fix up that plumbing a little bit. Josey, why don’t you run out into the garden, and get some water from one of the outside faucets?”

Josey trotted off agreeably, and when she was gone, Ish took the opportunity to kiss Em, and to tell her what he was planning for the day. Josey was gone for a little while, and then came back with the kettle full.

“The water out there ran faster for a little while, and then it just died out to a trickle, too,” she said, setting the kettle on the gasoline stove.

“That’s a nuisance!” said Em. “We’ll need more water for washing the dishes.”

Ish recognized the tone of voice. This was one of the times when a crisis was laid directly at the feet of the menfolk to do something about.

Breakfast was served on the dining-room table, and the table looked just about the way it might have looked in the Old Times. Ish sat at one end, and Em at the other. They had only four children at home now. Robert, who was sixteen, and almost fully grown up, according to the standards of The Tribe, sat on one side. Beside him was Walt, who was twelve, and very big and active for his age. And on the other side, close to the kitchen door, sat Joey and Josey, part of whose work was to help with breakfast, by aiding with the cooking and setting of the table, and running in and out to wait on table and helping to wash the dishes afterwards.

As he sat down, Ish could not help thinking how little this particular scene differed from what it might have been in the Old Times. To be sure, he would never have expected then to be the father of so many children. But, granting the numbers, the family group was just what it might have been at any time in almost any society—father, mother, and children, tightly grouped to form the basic social unit, so basic in fact that it might be considered biological rather than social. After all, he thought, the family was the toughest of all human institutions. It had preceded civilization, and so it naturally survived afterwards.